


Land of Lost and Lonely Souls

by ashkatom



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-02
Updated: 2012-12-02
Packaged: 2017-11-20 02:37:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/580355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashkatom/pseuds/ashkatom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You’re halfway through cutting out the pieces for a new skirt when Redglare shuffles into your sewing room. She doesn’t close the door, which is unusual for her. When she presses her face to your back as you cut, her skin radiates warmth.</p>
<p>“Oh, no,” you say, and set down your scissors.</p>
<p>“Oh, yes,” Redglare says, and sniffs in misery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Land of Lost and Lonely Souls

**Author's Note:**

> More promptfic! "Redglare/Dolorosa: for some reason the former’s synesthesia is acting up so that she smells red things as green and vice versa; someone has a palecrush on the latter; there is PDA. (if you like, please feel free to ignore parts of that/relegate parts of that to a throwaway sentence/have the PDA be a different couple.)"

The first indication you have that something is wrong is the rain. Everyone stands out in it, which you can’t exactly blame them for since you did the same thing, but it was hardly the most sensible act. Worrying bubble phenomena have a way of short-circuiting common sense.

The second indication is the quiet after the storm.

Redglare is still asleep when you wake up, which is unusual, but not enough to have you worried. You wash up and get dressed, prepare for the onslaught of people that are usually dwelling in your communal block at this hour, and step out to nothing.

You backtrack and check your recuperacoon. Redglare’s still there. Good. If everyone had mysteriously disappeared...

Well, they haven’t. They’re likely just busy. It should be a relief to not have to sort everything out for once.

\--

You’re halfway through cutting out the pieces for a new skirt when Redglare shuffles into your sewing room. She doesn’t close the door, which is unusual for her. When she presses her face to your back as you cut, her skin radiates warmth.

“Oh, no,” you say, and set down your scissors.

“Oh, yes,” Redglare says, and sniffs in misery. “You smell good,” she adds, and buries her face back in the crook of your neck. You manage to pry her off and set her on the table. Her eyes are teal-rimmed and watery and she sniffs every few seconds until you hand her a handkerchief.

You pinch the back of her hand. The skin stays pale and takes a moment to settle back into place. Perfect.

“You’re dehydrated, first of all,” you say, and feel her forehead. Her eyes close in relief as you cool her down, but before long the heat she’s putting out overwhelms any positive effect you may have had. She’s nowhere near as warm as Sufferer, or even Psiionic, but far too warm for a tealblood. “And you’re burning up, which can’t be helping.”

“Why am I sick?” Redglare laments, and blows her nose. “Rosa, you are an awful god.” She blows her nose again. “And everything smells wrong, it is incredibly disorienting and I don’t like it.”

You fight down the urge to take Redglare back to the recuperacoon and keep her there until she rests properly, because it likely wouldn’t help and would also drive the both of you insane. Redglare needs something constructive to do, and you need something to convince you that she is not likely to die.

“Firstly,” you say, ticking off the appropriate finger, “you will take ablutions and stop getting slime all over my things. Secondly, you will drink as much water as you are able to without throwing up. Thirdly, you will lie down on the couch and do nothing more strenuous than watching movies and sleeping.”

Redglare considers. “Join me in the ablutions chamber, Dollface. Getting the sopor off might be too strenuous for me.”

You relent and let her lead you to the ablutions chamber. You only have to catch her on the way once.

\--

You decide there’s no real point in getting properly dressed when your day will be spent on the seating block and the only visitors you’re likely to get will either be too sick to care or too worried about their sick compatriots to care. When you offer Redglare her pyjamas, she sniffs the red strips disdainfully and hands them back before hooking your own out of your arms.

“Now I know you’re sick,” you say. You mean it as a joke, but it falls flat. You’re more worried about her than you want to let on. To cover your slip, you put Redglare’s pyjamas away and find a pair of loose pants and a shirt. You think the shirt may be Disciple’s. A few perigees and already the laundry is a hopeless case.

Redglare’s hand worms its way into yours and you turn slightly to look at her. She throws a towel over your head and begins drying your hair. “You don’t have to worry so much, you know! I have been sick before.”

You pick up the front of the towel from where it drapes over your horns and meet Redglare’s gaze. She’s sick and she’s trying to take care of you. This woman may not know the meaning of the word ‘rest.’

Then again, neither do you. You’re not the sick one, though.

You flip the towel back over Redglare to hear her squawk, get changed, and march your matesprit out to the communal block. She immediately collects all of the green cushions at one end of the seating block and nests there. You bring her water and recline on the other end of the couch, tucking your feet under her legs.

“Put on In Which A Veteran Legislacerator Is Partnered With A Loose Cannon And The Two Cautiously Form A Pale Relationship While Rediscovering Purpose Through Their Work As They Uncover A Nefarious Scheme,” Redglare says.

“You’re going to have to be more specific,” you inform her.

She throws a cushion at you. “The third one, Rosa, and wasting legislacerator time-”

You throw the cushion back before she can finish.

\--

Some time later, Redglare is snoring into your chest and probably drooling over Disciple’s shirt. Your left arm has lost all feeling and your right is - well, not so much trapped as you’re too afraid to move it and wake her up. She looks peaceful, something rare when she’s awake, and the amount of pity you feel for her is sickening. You feel it seize up inside you whenever you so much as look at her, let alone when you’re responsible for her.

She looks a little better, you think, in the vain hope you can stop yourself from worrying about her. Either her temperature has gone down or she’s warmed you up enough that you can’t feel much of a difference between the two of you. As long as everyone else continues to be miserable on their own, she should get plenty of rest.

You should check up on everyone, though. Redglare sighs and crawls up you in her sleep until her face is pressed into your neck, and you carefully lay one hand on her back. When she doesn’t wake up, you begin tracing your hand up and down, not sure if you’re soothing her or yourself more with the gesture. Everyone can wait, you decide, and close your eyes. You can’t think of a much better way to spend a rainy night.

\--

You hear some shuffling, then feel Redglare reach out and flail at something. There’s a dull _thwack_ , and you crack open an eye, but Redglare makes a comforting noise at you and you fall back into your doze.

\--

When you wake up, light is starting to stream in through one of the windows that hasn’t had its blinds drawn. Your back hurts, your neck hurts, your arms hurt, everywhere Redglare’s thousand elbows are hurts, and yet you can’t bring yourself to regret taking a nap on the seating block.

Then you look around and carefully, without rousing Redglare, insert your fist in your mouth and bite down. Your communal block is _full of trolls_! And yes, that’s what it’s there for, but now they’ve all seen you _in your pyjamas_! With Redglare’s drool on your shirt, no less! Not to mention that you’re almost piling your matesprit, which was fine and romantic and very flushed when you were alone, and - oh no, your _hair_. Even your grubs have never seen you like this, you’re sure.

You are going to put new locks on all the doors when they leave again.

“Mmh,” Redglare says. “Heart beating. Everyone’s asleep, Rosa, they just didn’t want to be alone.”

It’s easy enough to tell who escaped getting sick. Psiionic catches colds as if he’s magnetic to them, and Disciple’s passed clean out over the laps of - yes, Sufferer _and_ Darkleer, that can’t be comfortable. They seem to have avoided the chill, as has Dualscar, who is the very cautious pillow of a tossing and turning Mindfang. Summoner’s flat on his stomach, sprawled out next to Gra, both of whom seem fine and were probably roped out of the caves by Mindfang’s whining. Handmaid is the only one you’re unsure of, and the only reason you can tell she’s part of the blanket lump next to Psiionic is one spiral horn sticking out from the side.

All of them, you are satisfied to note, are as poorly put together as you are. At least you got the seating block, as befits you given that it’s your hive. There are enough blankets and pillows strewn around to construct a town, in any case.

“How are they sleeping like that?” you marvel.

“I told them if they didn’t, I would make them sleep out in the rain.” Redglare pushes herself up and looks at the crowd. “I didn’t expect the results to be so entertaining.”

You sigh and give up on any chance of remaining dignity. “Let me up, Redglare.”

“I can’t.” She collapses back on top of you. “You are simply too delicious, sugar melon.”

“Sugar melon?” You can feel your lips trying to twitch into a fond smile and beat the urge ruthlessly down.

“Kiwi-lime smoothie,” she yawns. “Sopor and green apple pie.”

“Do you have a main course in mind?” you ask, as you wriggle out from under her.

“I did, but it’s leaving.”

You shake your head and gather up an armful of blankets, pausing to drape one over Summoner. When he stirs, you slip a pillow under his head. You do a slow circuit of the room like this, carefully making everyone more comfortable without letting them know you’re doing so. Redglare watches with interest as you shooshpap them all one by one, adjusting pillows and blankets until everyone seems more comfortable, at least.

“I wish we could order pizza,” Redglare says with simple yearning when you climb back onto the seating block. Rain drums steadily on the roof and you find yourself agreeing, despite the fact that you’ve never ordered pizza in your life. It seems like the thing to do, really.

“I’ll get Dualscar to make some later,” you say, and yawn.  Redglare runs a finger down the curve of your left horn and taps the point of it. So far away from the base, it’s soothing instead of stimulating, and you close your eyes with a sigh. “If I have the time to spare from looking after this lot.”

“You are pale for the whole world,” Redglare says, and kisses your horn. “It’s disgusting the way we all reciprocate to indulge you. Go to sleep before I have to kidnap you to get any share of the pity.”

You don’t know how to tell her that her share may well be all of it, with how much it hurts to have her hurt, with all the strife with Mindfang and the quadrant confusion in the beginning, and the fact that you can’t not meddle to save others hurt. So you feel her forehead to make sure her temperature really is going down, check to make sure the rasp in her voice doesn’t come from swollen glands, kiss her because you would get sicker than a short cold for Redglare for much stupider reasons, and go back to sleep.

\--

Dualscar makes pizza when he wakes up and nobody taunts anyone else over sleep attire. When you’re all each other have, some lines mustn’t be crossed, you surmise. For all your troubled history together, there’s not a group that you’d prefer to be stuck in the afterlife with.

Later, Mindfang builds a blanket fort. You try to re-evaluate that preference, and can’t, even when she gets pizza on the sheets.


End file.
